Is this Article a Comic?

Abstract

The article begins by asking why comics scholars should
create comics as scholarship and traces possible answers
through a variety of related fields: English, Rhetoric and
Composition, Art, and Games. It then investigates the
question of whether this article is itself a comic, by
reviewing the history of the conversation about defining
comics as an imitation of the Bayeux Tapestry. This tapestry
section outlines the major camps, positions, and moves that
comics scholars have made. The two major threads are the
essentialist camp (with Kunzle, Eisner, McCloud, Harvey,
Carrier, and Hayman and Pratt) and the constructivist camp
(Meskin and Beaty). The section ends with Bart Beaty’s
recent (2012) conceptualization of a comics world that does
not need to define individual artifacts as being or not
being comics. The article ends with a discussion of the
importance of distinguishing definition from
conceptualization. Building on Beaty’s conceptualization and
Gilles Deleuze’s theory of the concept and critique of
representation, it offers applications to the comics world.
Finally, it returns to the question of whether or not this
article is a comic. The answer (yes, and becoming something
else), calls for further interventions throughout the comics
world that don’t ask what comics are but what comics might
become.

Creating this article was one of the most challenging and
exhilarating academic projects I’ve ever taken part in. I had to
learn how to do new things every day (when I began, I’d never
used Adobe Muse before). It also gave me the techniques and
knowledge to create a book-length digital monograph, Rhizcomics
(forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press). In many
ways, this article was a test-run to teach me how to write the
book.

I began with a script and a few sketches and ideas for
interactive elements. I knew I wanted to push the boundaries of
what could be considered a comic (similar to Chris Ware’s
Building Stories or Richard
McGuire’s Here, neither of which had
been published when I wrote the script). I also knew I wanted to
engage various strands of DH thought. Typically, when I think of
DH I think of data and numbers. If I think of visuals at all,
it’s of graphs and other "dry" visualizations. However, I’ve
also pushed students to create compelling visualizations of
information and arguments in my classes, and I began to realize
that drawing is another form of visualization.

The script led to a storyboard and then a few proof-of-concept
web pages designed in Adobe Edge Animate. My first experiment
was with one of the panels of the Tapestry section. It was the
first time I had drawn using a stylus, so I wanted to get a feel
for the look of the finished product. Originally, I planned on
including all sorts of marginalia throughout the Tapestry
section. That plan got scrapped pretty quickly when I realized
just how long it was going to take to draw with a stylus.

After getting feedback on the storyboard, script, and single
page, I created the article over a three-week period during the
summer. It was fantastic to be able to give the project such
sustained focus. Each morning I drew new images (almost all of
them with pencil and ink on paper) and each afternoon I did the
computer work: scanning, fine-tuning and coloring in Photoshop
and Illustrator, adding interactivity in Edge Animate, and doing
layout in Muse. Finally, I shared the article with a few
colleagues to get initial feedback, and I judiciously made just
about every change they recommended.

I ended up doing a lot less coding than I had foreseen. Edge
Animate allows users some space to compose and edit javascript,
but Muse generally pushes its users away from code entirely. I
found this a strange way to work, as I was more comfortable with
Dreamweaver and with being able to edit the code I create. I
have mixed feelings about Muse: it’s simple, but it takes a
great deal of control away from designers.

I was very excited to play with paraphrase and block quotations
in particular. When reading scholarship, I often find block
quotes to be jarring, pulling me away from the author’s thread.
On the other hand, I’m often frustrated by paraphrase, wondering
what the cited author really said. The digital comics platform
gave me a way to have my cake and eat it too, providing
paraphrases in the speech balloons and offering the full
quotation to those who click on the balloons. It also helped me
avoid the awkwardness of academic prose appearing in speech
balloons. Speech balloons are meant to represent dialogue, and
academic prose is rarely that conversational.

I was surprised to discover the ways my arguments changed as the
project coalesced. The Deleuzian Comics section in particular
was difficult to visualize initially, but came together
gradually and from many directions at once. The final product
falls short of what comics might be, but that was also always
the plan. I’m hoping it pushes someone to make something better
(see the other articles in this issue for more answers to the
question "What might comics become?").

I would like to thank the editors and reviewers at DHQ for their
help in making this article work. The reviewers offered
insightful feedback throughout the process. I am amazed that
Anastasia Salter and Roger Whitson were able to propose this
collection and see it through to publication. It was a monster
and couldn’t have been completed without their careful guidance.
Julia Flanders and John Walsh were incredibly helpful and
forgiving of the technological complexities of this article. It
certainly provided to be more work for them than most articles
would be and I sincerely appreciate their efforts. Amanda
Booher, Joshua Hilst, and Ben and Meaghan Helms read early
versions of this article and their feedback proved
invaluable.

Works Cited

Ball 2008 Ball, Cheryl, and
Ryan Moeller. "Converging the
ASS[umptions] between U and ME; Or How New Media can
Bridge a scholarly/creative Split in English
Studies."
Computers and Composition
Online (2008). Web. January 29, 2014.

Becker 1959 Becker, Stephen
D. Comic Art in America: A Social
History of the Funnies, the Political Cartoons, Magazine
Humor, Sporting Cartoons, and Animated Cartoons.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959. Print.

Carrier 2000 Carrier, David.
The Aesthetics of Comics.
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000.
Print.

Couperie 1972 Couperie,
Pierre. "Antecedents and Definition of
the Comic Strip."
The Art of the Comic Strip.
Eds. Walter Herdeg and David Pascal. Zurich: The Graphis
Press, 1972. 8-13. Print.